


i should be doing alright

by golden_geese



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: M/M, Other, alcohol use, also poppins, charlie and mac spending new years together as teens, eating grilled charlies, high school era, it's up to you, mild allusions to sexual assault, repressing trauma, watching karate movies and stuff, we love poppins, weed use, you can read this as shippy or as pals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 18:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16454915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/golden_geese/pseuds/golden_geese
Summary: new year's eve, 1992. just two buddies, some weed, some beers, some underlying trauma, some sandwiches, and a dog.





	i should be doing alright

1992

He doesn’t remember what it is that he and Charlie are quietly laughing at-- he only knows that Charlie’s laugh doesn’t sound right. It hasn’t sounded right all day. It sounds like someone else’s laugh-- like the indescribable quality of it that makes it Charlie has been muffled, taped up, tarnished. Mac stops laughing as he realizes this. Frowns a little bit.

“Hey, man, won’t your mom be worried?” He asks as they continue down the dark Philly streets.

“Dunno,” Charlie says. He tugs on the hem of his jacket, crinkling the zipper around in his fingers. A beat-up Camaro zips past them. “I don’t want to go home, though.”

“You don’t?” Mac recalibrates. Tries to do Charlie science. Imagines Charlie’s home. The dimly lit basement that always smells kind of like cat piss, the small bedroom Charlie shares with his weird uncle, the cookies Charlie’s mom is always burning, ripping their singed scent through the house like a bad memory-- okay, Mac reasons. Maybe he wouldn’t love living there either. “You can come stay at my place if you want, man.” Not like his house is all that much better.

Charlie nods several times. “Okay. Yeah. Thanks. I’ll stay at your place.”

Mac looks at his shitty digital watch. It’s late-- it’s nearly two in the morning. Charlie’s mom probably wrote him off as dead and went to bed anyway, he figures. She’ll just be pleasantly surprised when he turns up tomorrow.

The two of them turn around the next corner, onto the street Mac lives on. Charlie’s house is only a few blocks away. But if he doesn’t want to go home, it’s not like Mac is going to make him. They only have so many nights of winter break left, anyway, before school starts back up. They might as well enjoy it and hang out all night.

“Tomorrow’s new year’s eve,” Mac realizes out loud.

“Guess so,” Charlie says, kicking at a crushed beer can on the cracked sidewalk. It scutters into the street, the rickety light from the street lamps glinting off it.

“Weird, man.”

“Weird.”

***

Charlie’s arm is around Mac when they wake up several hours later. It’s not weird, though. Charlie is a serial sleep snuggler, and Mac has woken up like this many times over the course of his and Charlie’s friendship. He gently nudges Charlie off him and gets out of bed, throat dry like cracked clay soil. Pats Poppins on the head as he walks past him, curled up on his dog bed in the corner of Mac’s room.

Still wearing his jeans and tee shirt from yesterday, he wanders through his small house, yawning. Passes his mom, watching the TV on low volume with a cigarette in her mouth.

“Morning, Mom,” he says, smiling at her.

She affords him half a second’s glance and a slight nod.

“Charlie stayed over, just so you know,” he says.

She doesn’t react.

“We got home okay last night. The movie wasn’t very good, but we snuck in so we didn’t have to pay and we just wandered around and got hot dogs after. The karate stuff was cool though,” Mac goes on as he heads into the kitchen for water. He fills a glass from the tap and throws it back, ignoring the sharp stoney taste of the unfiltered city water. When he’s done he rinses the glass, wipes it out with a towel, and puts it back away. He doesn’t like dishes piling up. Never has. There’s germs on them, he always thinks-- maybe the germs could get in the air and he and his mom and Poppins would breathe them in and get sick.

“I’ll be upstairs if you need me,” Mac adds as he passes her on his way back. The stairs creak under his sock feet as he walks up them, yawning a little. He looks at his scratched watch, which he never took off-- it’s nearly noon.

Charlie is awake when he gets back to his room. He’s holding Poppins, who moved to Charlie’s lap in Mac’s absence-- either that, or Charlie moved Poppins there. He scratches his scraggly ears.

“Morning, bro,” Mac says. “You sleep good?”

Charlie shrugs. “Okay. You?”

“Yeah, I slept good.” He sits down on his bed too, leaning forward to pet his dog. “You know of any new year parties we can sneak into tonight?” He asks.

“Nah,” Charlie says. “Do you?”

“Nope. That’s okay. Do you have family stuff to go to?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t want to if there is,” Charlie says matter-of-factly. Poppins shakes his ears around and sneezes.

“Bless you, buddy,” Mac says before turning back to Charlie. “How come, dude?”

Charlie’s shoulders shift. “I just don’t, man. You wanna watch movies?”

“Yeah, sure,” Mac agrees. “I have to meet with a couple guys today to sell, but you can come with me. We can ride bikes. Then we can steal some stuff to make grilled cheeses tonight to eat when we’re high-- you wanna do that? Grilled cheeses are good when you have munchies.”

He mostly only says this because he knows how Charlie feels about grilled cheeses. Mac, personally, could take them or leave them. But something has Charlie down, he can tell, and Mac’s nothing if not a people pleaser.

“Yeah,” Charlie says, nodding. “That sounds real good.”

“Cool,” Mac says. “I’m gonna take a shower really quick. There’s some magazines and stuff on my dresser if you want something to do.”

Charlie doesn’t respond. Goes back to scratching Poppins’ ears. 

***

They’re high as kites. Mac doesn't know where his mom is-- she’s just kind of gone when he and Charlie get back around eight. His janky key copy works this time, though, so they’re able to get inside. He locks the door behind them.

Mac feeds Poppins dinner, stumbling a little from the joint he and Charlie shared on the way home. Charlie’s nose is pink from the cold; he sits down at the kitchen table, rubbing it with the hem of his coat sleeve.

As Mac puts Poppins’ food away, he realizes he still has the pack of cheddar cheese slices shoved in his coat sleeve. He takes off the coat, letting the plastic package fall to the cracked tile floor-- he laughs at the sound it makes before leaning down to pick it up.

Charlie has already put the bread and the chocolate syrup on the table. Why they need chocolate syrup is beyond Mac, but Charlie stole it while Mac was getting the cheese, so it’s not like he had opportunity to question it.

“You got peanut butter?” Charlie asks slowly.

“Yeah, bro, of course we got peanut butter.” It was the one thing that was reliably always in the McDonald pantry-- all else was left to whatever Mac felt like stealing and whatever Mrs. Mac randomly bought at the Wawa next to the Jiffy Lube.

Charlie makes his way to the pantry to get it as Mac turns the burner on. He fishes out a scratched up frying pan from the stack of cookware in the oven and puts it on the burner, which was a shitty electric one that would not be turning red for a good several minutes.

“But what do you want peanut butter for, dude?” He adds several moments too late as he starts to butter the bread.

“I got an idea,” Charlie says. “But let’s eat normal ones first just in case. I’m starving.”

Mac laughs weakly. Doesn’t question what the hell Charlie means by that. Puts the sandwiches in the pan. Mac manages not to burn them. When they’re done, he puts the frying pan on a hot pad on the table, and he and Charlie sit down to eat them.

“This is good, man,” Charlie begins, swallowing, “but I always think-- you could like, make this shit better, you know? I could really make it Charlie. Put so much Charlie in it it’s bursting. ‘Cause this? It’s like, it’s pretty good, but the thing is-- everyone already eats this.”

“Yeah, man,” Mac agrees, laughing a little, even though he has no idea what Charlie’s talking about.

“Anyways, d’you want one?” Charlie asks as he finishes his grilled cheese.

“Yeah, dude,” Mac laughs, even though, still, he has no idea what Charlie’s talking about.

“Well, you just sit tight, my man. I’ll get it going.” He takes the frying pan back to the stove and turns the heat back on. Then he goes for the bread, buttering it like normal-- then he shifts how he’s standing, so Mac can’t really see what’s going on anymore, and he accepts his fate. Goes to grab a couple cans of beer out of the fridge; cracks one open for each of them. Takes a long gulp from his.

“Peanut butter last,” Charlie mumbles as he finishes constructing the sandwiches. He flips them, really digging at the pan-- and Mac catches sight of some burnt orange cheese. He starts laughing again, so hard his eyes water-- 

It doesn’t deter Charlie from bringing the two sandwiches to the table on a plastic plate, though, a proud smile on his face.

“What the hell, man?” Mac wheezes.

“It’s a grilled Charlie,” he explains, sitting down. “Butter inside, chocolate syrup inside, cheese outside, peanut butter outside.” He grabs one of the sloppy sandwiches and takes a big bite out of it, nodding emphatically as he does. “It turned out so good, dude.”

“Only a high person could make that up,” Mac manages, wiping the tears off his face. “Aw, man.”

“Oh, I’m not high,” Charlie says. “I only had like, two puffs. I’m good, man.” He takes another huge bite.

Mac manages to stop laughing enough to take a bite of his grilled Charlie. It’s… it’s sure a situation, is all he can think as he takes a second bite. It mostly tastes like peanut butter and a little chocolate syrup. Then, on the end-- you get the cheese. The array of textures is a lot to deal with.

He sets it down after the second bite.

“You don’t like it, dude?” Charlie asks, almost sounding a little disappointing. He’s already halfway finished with his.

“No, dude, of course I like it, it’s awesome,” Mac says, picking it back up and wolfing down a third bite. “It’s just sticky so I needed a break.”

“Being sticky is what makes food good,” Charlie says. “That or gloopy.”

Mac almost chokes on his grilled Charlie, he’s laughing so hard. But he manages to finish the sandwich. Washes it down with a gulp of beer.

“You think Dennis is having more fun than us in the ski place, man?” Mac asks once he’s swallowed the beer.

“Nah,” Charlie dismisses. “He’s missing out, is what Dennis is doing. He missed out on the grilled Charlies. I gotta give him one sometime, man. He’s gotta try it. I’m gonna blow his mind.”

Mac can’t disagree. Couldn’t possibly. Instead he just lets the weed pull his lungs into laughter again. Cheers-es his beer can against Charlie’s before taking another gulp.

They finish their beers. Crush the cans in their fists; throw them in the overflowing trash can. Then they head over to the TV to see if there’s a game or a good karate movie on or something. They settle for a Twilight Zone marathon.

“Hey, Charlie?” Mac says one or two episodes in. The weed has descended him from the laughing-at-everything phase to the sleepy and droopy phase-- also known as the phase where Mac’s filter completely dissolves.

“Yeah.”

“How come you didn’t want to go home?”

“Huh?”

“You said you didn’t want to go home last night and you still didn’t go home today. And you didn’t want to go if your family was having a party tonight.”

“Oh,” Charlie says. “No reason.”

“There’s gotta be, dude.”

“Just kind of annoyed ‘cause of Uncle Jack,” he says like it’s nothing. Reaches down to pet Poppins, who’s sleeping at their feet.

“Why?”

“He’s just always around. His eyes are really buggy. I dunno. He’s weird.”

“Huh,” Mac says. “That sucks. I mean, you can stay here whenever you want, bro.”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

Mac goes to get them each another beer. They gulp from them as the next episode of The Twilight Zone starts.

Eventually, a firework goes off. Then another; people are cheering next door. Mac looks at his watch. 12:00 a.m.

“Happy new year, man,” he says, glancing toward Charlie.

“Happy new year.”

**Author's Note:**

> follow me at golden-geese.tumblr.com! this is an anon request from there-- you can be next!


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